DEXTER – The cross country season has been under way for a couple of weeks, but for teams in the KLAA West, the tests began on Monday.

It came at Hudson Mills MetroPark, where Brighton and Pinckney split the first division meet of the season.

Pinckney’s boys won easily, taking seven of the top nine spots, while the Brighton girls took their meet 22-36 despite not having the overall winner.

“Tom has a phenomenal program,” Brighton girls coach Kristi Matuszewski said of Pinckney coach Tom Carney. “You always expect some good runners. You can look and see what competition is out there and what to expect.”

On Monday, there was the element of the unexpected, as Pinckney freshman Courtney Jarema beat Brighton senior Jenna Sica by six seconds to finish first overall.

“I tried to stay with (Sica) and see how it went from there,” Jarema said.

The Bulldogs took six of the next eight places to secure the victory.

While both teams were looking to win, they also were looking ahead.

“We want to start working as a team in the first races,” Sica said. “We have some new people on the team, and we’ve been quite spread out in the results. So we wanted to work on working with each other, because it’s easier to run as a team than as individuals.”

Matuszewski said running the same course at the end of August undoubtedly helped, too.

“We were fortunate to run this course two weeks ago,” she said. “Even if they’d run it two years ago (the last time Brighton ran in a dual meet at Hudson Mills), you don’t really know it. Back in the woods, it gets really quiet, so you have to find something within yourself to keep going.”

In the boys race, Austin Wicker and Ryan Talbott finished together in 16 minutes, 48 seconds, more than a minute ahead of Connor Parrell, who finished third. Pinckney won the meet 19-4.

“The goal was to, hopefully, drag our teammates along with us going in, and they did as well as they possibly could,” Talbott said. “We tried to stay with (Parrell) as long as he stayed with us.”

“I really respect Austin and Ryan,” Parnell said. “I stuck with them for as long as I could. But at the end of the day I didn’t have the turnover they did.”

The Bulldogs were without their top runner, Chip Osborne, who was at the meet but did not compete.

Still, Brighton coach Bob Ritsema was a little mystified by his team’s performance.

“We ran slower than normal,” he said. “I don’t know why. We ran pretty decent on Saturday.... Some kids ran decent but I want to get more consistent up front and throughout the whole thing. You’ve got to do what you’ve trained to do, and get better.”

Still, after two weeks of invitationals, the dual meets provide something new for teams to look forward to.

“We just have to figure out who we can pair up with,” Carney said. “We have to figure out how to depend on each other and where we’re supposed to be during a race. But I thought we looked good today.”

After Monday, there are four more opportunities before the big meets on the schcdule: the Lakes Conference, regional and state meets.

“I hope to have some PRs form there and have some good training going on from here,” Parrell said. “I wasn’t going to worry about my time today. I was glad to be here.”